WILLIAM BARNES The Turnstile

	Ah! sad wer we as we did peäce
	The wold church road, wi’ downcast feäce,
	The while the bells, that mwoan’d so deep
	Above our child a-left asleep,
	Wer now a-zingèn all alive
	Wi’ tother bells to meäke the vive.
	But up at woone pleäce we come by,
	‘Twer hard to keep woone’s two eyes dry;
	On Steän-cliff road, ’ithin the drong,
	Up where, as vo’k do pass along,
	The turnèn stile, a-païnted white,
	Do sheen by day an’ show by night.
	Vor always there, as we did goo
	To church, thik stile did let us drough,
	Wi’ spreadèn eärms that wheel’d to guide
	Us each in turn to tother zide.
	An’ vu’st ov all the train he took
	My wife, wi’ winsome gaït an’ look;
	An’ then zent on my little maïd,
	A-skippèn onward, overjaÿ’d
	To reach ageän the pleäce o’ pride,
	Her comely mother’s left han’ zide.
	An’ then, a-wheelèn roun’, he took
	On me, ’ithin his third white nook.
	An’ in the fourth, a-sheäkèn wild,
	He zent us on our giddy child.
	But eesterday he guided slow
	My downcast Jenny, vull o’ woe,
	An’ then my little maïd in black,
	A-walkèn softly on her track;
	An’ after he’d a-turn’d ageän,
	To let me goo along the leäne,
	He had noo little bwoy to vill
	His last white eärms, an’ they stood still.

WALTER SAVAGE LANDOR Memory 1863

	The mother of the Muses, we are taught,
	Is Memory: she has left me; they remain,
	And shake my shoulder, urging me to sing
	About the summer days, my loves of old.
	Alas! alas! is all I can reply.
	Memory has left me with that name alone,
	Harmonious name, which other bards may sing,
	But her bright image in my darkest hour
	Comes back, in vain comes back, call’d or uncall’d.
	Forgotten are the names of visitors
	Ready to press my hand but yesterday;
	Forgotten are the names of earlier friends
	Whose genial converse and glad countenance
	Are fresh as ever to mine ear and eye:
	To these, when I have written, and besought
	Remembrance of me, the word Dear alone
	Hangs on the upper verge, and waits in vain.
	A blessing wert thou, O oblivion,
	If thy stream carried only weeds away,
	But vernal and autumnal flowers alike
	It hurries down to wither on the strand.

DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI Sudden Light

	I have been here before,
	But when or how I cannot tell:
	I know the grass beyond the door,
	The sweet, keen smell,
	The sighing sound, the lights around the shore.

	You have been mine before, –
	How long ago I may not know:
	But just when at that swallow’s soar
	Your neck turned so,
	Some veil did fall, – I knew it all of yore.

	Has this been thus before?
	And shall not thus time’s eddying flight
	Still with our lives our love restore
	In death’s despite,
	And day and night yield one delight once more?

1864 ROBERT BROWNING Youth and Art

	It once might have been, once only:
	We lodged in a street together,
	You, a sparrow on the housetop lonely,
	I, a lone she-bird of his feather.

	Your trade was with sticks and clay,
	You thumbed, thrust, patted and polished,
	Then laughed ‘They will see some day
	Smith made, and Gibson demolished.’

	My business was song, song, song;
	I chirped, cheeped, trilled and twittered,
	‘Kate Brown’s on the boards ere long,
	And Grisi’s existence embittered!’

	I earned no more by a warble
	Than you by a sketch in plaster;
	You wanted a piece of marble,
	I needed a music-master.

	We studied hard in our styles,
	Chipped each at a crust like Hindoos,
	For air looked out on the tiles,
	For fun watched each other’s windows.

	You lounged, like a boy of the South,
	Cap and blouse – nay, a bit of beard too;
	Or you got it, rubbing your mouth
	With fingers the clay adhered to.

	And I – soon managed to find
	Weak points in the flower-fence facing,
	Was forced to put up a blind
	And be safe in my corset-lacing.

	No harm! It was not my fault
	If you never turned your eye’s tail up
	As I shook upon E in alt,
	Or ran the chromatic scale up:

	For spring bade the sparrows pair,
	And the boys and girls gave guesses,
	And stalls in our street looked rare
	With bulrush and watercresses.

	Why did not you pinch a flower
	In a pellet of clay and fling it?
	Why did not I put a power
	Of thanks in a look, or sing it?

	I did look, sharp as a lynx,
	(And yet the memory rankles)
	When models arrived, some minx
	Tripped up-stairs, she and her ankles.

	But I think I gave you as good!
	‘That foreign fellow, – who can know
	How she pays, in a playful mood,
	For his tuning her that piano?’

	Could you say so, and never say
	‘Suppose we join hands and fortunes,
	And I fetch her from over the way,
	Her piano, and long tunes and short tunes?’

	No, no: you would not be rash,
	Nor I rasher and something over:
	You’ve to settle yet Gibson’s hash,
	And Grisi yet lives in clover.

	But you meet the Prince at the Board,
	I’m queen myself at bals-paré,
	I’ve married a rich old lord,
	And you’re dubbed knight and an R.A.

	Each life unfulfilled, you see;
	It hangs still, patchy and scrappy:
	We have not sighed deep, laughed free,
	Starved, feasted, despaired, – been happy.

	And nobody calls you a dunce,
	And people suppose me clever:
	This could but have happened once,
	And we missed it, lost it for ever.

JOHN CLARE

	The thunder mutters louder and more loud
	With quicker motion hay folks ply the rake
	Ready to burst slow sails the pitch black cloud
	And all the gang a bigger haycock make
	To sit beneath – the woodland winds awake
	The drops so large wet all thro’ in an hour
	A tiney flood runs down the leaning rake
	In the sweet hay yet dry the hay folks cower
	And some beneath the waggon shun the shower

(1984)

1865 LEWIS CARROLL from Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland

	‘Repeat “You are old, Father William,’ ” said the Caterpillar.
	Alice folded her hands, and began: –

	‘You are old, Father William,’ the young man said,
	‘And your hair has become very white;
	And yet you incessantly stand on your head –
	Do you think, at your age, it is right?’

	‘In my youth,’ Father William replied to his son,
	‘I feared it might injure the brain;
	But, now that I’m perfectly sure I have none,
	Why, I do it again and again.’

	‘You are old,’ said the youth, ‘as I mentioned before,
	And have grown most uncommonly fat;
	Yet you turned a back-somersault in at the door –
	Pray, what is the reason of that?’

	‘In my youth,’ said the sage, as he shook his grey locks,
	‘I kept all my limbs very supple

	By the use of this ointment – one shilling the box –
	Allow me to sell you a couple?’

	‘You are old,’ said the youth, ‘and your jaws are too weak
	For anything tougher than suet;
	Yet you finished the goose, with the bones and the beak –
	Pray, how did you manage to do it?’

	‘In my youth,’ said his father, ‘I took to the law,
	And argued each case with my wife;
	And the muscular strength, which it gave to my jaw
	Has lasted the rest of my life.’

	‘You are old,’ said the youth, ‘one would hardly suppose
	That your eye was as steady as ever;
	Yet you balanced an eel on the end of your nose –
	What made you so awfully clever?’

	‘I have answered three questions, and that is enough,’
	Said his father. ‘Don’t give yourself airs!
	Do you think I can listen all day to such stuff?
	Be off, or I’ll kick you down-stairs!’

	‘That is not said right,’ said the Caterpillar.
	(… )
	‘Begin at the beginning,’ the King said, very gravely, ‘and go on till you come to the end: then stop.’
	There was dead silence in the court, whilst the White Rabbit read out these verses: –

	‘They told me you had been to her,
	And mentioned me to him:
	She gave me a good character,
	But said I could not swim.

	He sent them word I had not gone
	(We know it to be true):
	If she should push the matter on,
	What would become of you?

	I gave her one, they gave him two,
	You gave us three or more;
	They all returned from him to you,
	Though they were mine before.

	If I or she should chance to be
	Involved in this affair,
	He trusts to you to set them free,
	Exactly as we were.

	My notion was that you had been
	(Before she had this fit)
	An obstacle that came between
	Him, and ourselves, and it.

	Don’t let him know she liked them best,
	For this must ever be
	A secret, kept from all the rest,
	Between yourself and me.’

‘That’s the most important piece of evidence we’ve heard yet,’ said the King, rubbing his hands…

GEORGE ELIOT In a London Drawingroom

	The sky is cloudy, yellowed by the smoke.
	For view there are the houses opposite.
	Cutting the sky with one long line of wall
	Like solid fog: far as the eye can stretch
	Monotony of surface and of form
	Without a break to hang a guess upon.
	No bird can make a shadow as it flies,
	For all is shadow, as in ways o’erhung
	By thickest canvass, where the golden rays
	Are clothed in hemp. No figure lingering
	Pauses to feed the hunger of the eye
	Or rest a little on the lap of life.
	All hurry on and look upon the ground,
	Or glance unmarking at the passers by.
	The wheels are hurrying too, cabs, carriages
	All closed, in multiplied identity.
	The world seems one huge prison-house and court
	Where men are punished at the slightest cost,
	With lowest rate of colour, warmth and joy.

ARTHUR HUGH CLOUGH from Dipsychus

	‘There is no God,’ the wicked saith,
	‘And truly it’s a blessing,
	For what he might have done with us
	It’s better only guessing.’

	‘There is no God,’ a youngster thinks,
	‘Or really, if there may be,
	He surely didn’t mean a man
	Always to be a baby.’

	‘There is no God, or if there is,’
	The tradesman thinks, “twere funny
	If he should take it ill in me
	To make a little money.’

	‘Whether there be,’ the rich man says,
	‘It matters very little,
	For I and mine, thank somebody,
	Are not in want of victual.’

	Some others, also, to themselves
	Who scarce so much as doubt it,
	Think there is none, when they are well,
	And do not think about it.

	But country folks who live beneath
	The shadow of the steeple;
	The parson and the parson’s wife,
	And mostly married people;

	Youths green and happy in first love,
	So thankful for illusion;
	And men caught out in what the world
	Calls guilt, in first confusion;

	And almost every one when age,
	Disease, or sorrows strike him,
	Inclines to think there is a God,
	Or something very like Him.

1866 ALGERNON CHARLES SWINBURNE Itylus

	Swallow, my sister, O sister swallow,
	How can thine heart be full of the spring?
	A thousand summers are over and dead.
	What hast thou found in the spring to follow?
	What hast thou found in thine heart to sing?
	What wilt thou do when the summer is shed?

	O swallow, sister, O fair swift swallow,
	Why wilt thou fly after spring to the south,
	The soft south whither thine heart is set?
	Shall not the grief of the old time follow?
	Shall not the song thereof cleave to thy mouth?
	Hast thou forgotten ere I forget?

	Sister, my sister, O fleet sweet swallow,
	Thy way is long to the sun and the south;
	But I, fulfilled of my heart’s desire,
	Shedding my song upon height, upon hollow,
	From tawny body and sweet small mouth
	Feed the heart of the night with fire.

	I the nightingale all spring through,
	O swallow, sister, O changing swallow,
	All spring through till the spring be done,
	Clothed with the light of the night on the dew,
	Sing, while the hours and the wild birds follow,
	Take flight and follow and find the sun.

	Sister, my sister, O soft light swallow,
	Though all things feast in the spring’s guest-chamber,
	How hast thou heart to be glad thereof yet?
	For where thou fliest I shall not follow,
	Till life forget and death remember,
	Till thou remember and I forget.

	Swallow, my sister, O singing swallow,
	I know not how thou hast heart to sing.
	Hast thou the heart? is it all past over?
	Thy lord the summer is good to follow,
	And fair the feet of thy lover the spring:
	But what wilt thou say to the spring thy lover?

	O swallow, sister, O fleeting swallow,
	My heart in me is a molten ember
	And over my head the waves have met.
	But thou wouldst tarry or I would follow,
	Could I forget or thou remember,
	Couldst thou remember and I forget.

	O sweet stray sister, O shifting swallow,
	The heart’s division divideth us.
	Thy heart is light as a leaf of a tree;
	But mine goes forth among sea-gulfs hollow
	To the place of the slaying of Itylus,
	The feast of Daulis, the Thracian sea.

	O swallow, sister, O rapid swallow,
	I pray thee sing not a little space.
	Are not the roofs and the lintels wet?
	The woven web that was plain to follow,
	The small slain body, the flowerlike face,
	Can I remember if thou forget?

	O sister, sister, thy first-begotten!
	The hands that cling and the feet that follow,
	The voice of the child’s blood crying yet
	Who hath remembered me? who hath forgotten?
	Thou hast forgotten, O summer swallow,
	But the world shall end when I forget.

ALGERNON CHARLES SWINBURNE from Sapphics

	All the night sleep came not upon my eyelids,
	Shed not dew, nor shook nor unclosed a feather,
	Yet with lips shut close and with eyes of iron
	Stood and beheld me.

	Then to me so lying awake a vision
	Came without sleep over the seas and touched me,
	Softly touched mine eyelids and lips; and I too,
	Full of the vision,

	Saw the white implacable Aphrodite,
	Saw the hair unbound and the feet unsandalled
	Shine as fire of sunset on western waters;
	Saw the reluctant

	Feet, the straining plumes of the doves that drew her,
	Looking always, looking with necks reverted,
	Back to Lesbos, back to the hills whereunder
	Shone Mitylene;

	Heard the flying feet of the Loves behind her
	Make a sudden thunder upon the waters,
	As the thunder flung from the strong unclosing
	Wings of a great wind.

	So the goddess fled from her place, with awful
	Sound of feet and thunder of wings around her;
	While behind a clamour of singing women
	Severed the twilight.

	Ah the singing, ah the delight, the passion!
	All the Loves wept, listening; sick with anguish,
	Stood the crowned nine Muses about Apollo;
	Fear was upon them,

	While the tenth sang wonderful things they knew not
	Ah the tenth, the Lesbian! the nine were silent,
	None endured the sound of her song for weeping;
	Laurel by laurel,

	Faded all their crowns; but about her forehead,
	Round her woven tresses and ashen temples
	White as dead snow, paler than grass in summer,
	Ravaged with kisses,

	Shone a light of fire as a crown for ever.
	Yea, almost the implacable Aphrodite
	Paused, and almost wept; such a song was that song.

CHRISTINA ROSSETTI The Queen of Hearts

	How comes it, Flora, that, whenever we
	Play cards together, you invariably,
	However the pack parts,
	Still hold the Queen of Hearts?

	I’ve scanned you with a scrutinizing gaze,
	Resolved to fathom these your secret ways:
	But, sift them as I will,
	Your ways are secret still.

	I cut and shuffle; shuffle, cut, again;
	But all my cutting, shuffling, proves in vain:
	Vain hope, vain forethought too;
	That Queen still falls to you.

	I dropped her once, prepense; but, ere the deal
	Was dealt, your instinct seemed her loss to feel:
	‘There should be one card more,’
	You said, and searched the floor.

	I cheated once; I made a private notch
	In Heart-Queen’s back, and kept a lynx-eyed watch;
	Yet such another back
	Deceived me in the pack:

	The Queen of Clubs assumed by arts unknown
	An imitative dint that seemed my own;
	This notch, not of my doing,
	Misled me to my ruin.

	It baffles me to puzzle out the clue,
	Which must be skill, or craft, or luck in you:
	Unless, indeed, it be
	Natural affinity.

CHRISTINA ROSSETTI What Would I Give?

	What would I give for a heart of flesh to warm me thro’,
	Instead of this heart of stone ice-cold whatever I do;
	Hard and cold and small, of all hearts the worst of all.

	What would I give for words, if only words would come;
	But now in its misery my spirit has fallen dumb:
	O merry friends, go your way, I have never a word to say.

	What would I give for tears, not smiles but scalding tears,
	To wash the black mark clean, and to thaw the frost of years,
	To wash the stain ingrain and to make clean again.

1867 MATTHEW ARNOLD Dover Beach

	The sea is calm to-night.
	The tide is full, the moon lies fair
	Upon the straits; – on the French coast the light
	Gleams and is gone; the cliffs of England stand,
	Glimmering and vast, out in the tranquil bay.
	Come to the window, sweet is the night-air!
	Only, from the long line of spray
	Where the sea meets the moon-blanch’d land,
	Listen! you hear the grating roar
	Of pebbles which the waves draw back, and fling,
	At their return, up the high strand,
	Begin, and cease, and then again begin,
	With tremulous cadence slow, and bring
	The eternal note of sadness in.

	Sophocles long ago
	Heard it on the Aegaean, and it brought
	Into his mind the turbid ebb and flow
	Of human misery; we
	Find also in the sound a thought,
	Hearing it by this distant northern sea.

	The Sea of Faith
	Was once, too, at the full, and round earth’s shore
	Lay like the folds of a bright girdle furl’d.
	But now I only hear
	Its melancholy, long, withdrawing roar,
	Retreating, to the breath
	Of the night-wind, down the vast edges drear
	And naked shingles of the world.

	Ah, love, let us be true
	To one another! for the world, which seems
	To lie before us like a land of dreams,
	So various, so beautiful, so new,
	Hath really neither joy, nor love, nor light,
	Nor certitude, nor peace, nor help for pain;
	And we are here as on a darkling plain
	Swept with confused alarms of struggle and flight,
	Where ignorant armies clash by night.

(written? 1851)

MATTHEW ARNOLD Growing Old

	What is it to grow old?
	Is it to lose the glory of the form,
	The lustre of the eye?
	Is it for beauty to forego her wreath?
	– Yes, but not this alone.

	Is it to feel our strength –
	Not our bloom only, but our strength – decay?
	Is it to feel each limb
	Grow stiffer, every function less exact,
	Each nerve more loosely strung?

	Yes, this, and more; but not
	Ah, ’tis not what in youth we dream’d ’twould be!
	’Tis not to have our life
	Mellow’d and soften’d as with sunset-glow,
	A golden day’s decline.

	’Tis not to see the world
	As from a height, with rapt prophetic eyes,
	And heart profoundly stirr’d;
	And weep, and feel the fulness of the past,
	The years that are no more.

	It is to spend long days
	And not once feel that we were ever young;
	It is to add, immured
	In the hot prison of the present, month
	To month with weary pain.

	It is to suffer this,
	And feel but half, and feebly, what we feel.
	Deep in our hidden heart
	Festers the dull remembrance of a change,
	But no emotion – none.

	It is – last stage of all –
	When we are frozen up within, and quite
	The phantom of ourselves,
	To hear the world applaud the hollow ghost
	Which blamed the living man.

DORA GREENWELL A Scherzo. (A Shy Person’s Wishes)

	With the wasp at the innermost heart of a peach,
	On a sunny wall out of tip-toe reach,
	With the trout in the darkest summer pool,
	With the fern-seed clinging behind its cool
	Smooth frond, in the chink of an aged tree,
	In the woodbine’s horn with the drunken bee,
	With the mouse in its nest in a furrow old,
	With the chrysalis wrapt in its gauzy fold;
	With things that are hidden, and safe, and bold,
	With things that are timid, and shy, and free,
	Wishing to be;
	With the nut in its shell, with the seed in its pod,
	With the corn as it sprouts in the kindly clod,
	Far down where the secret of beauty shows
	In the bulb of the tulip, before it blows;
	With things that are rooted, and firm, and deep,
	Quiet to lie, and dreamless to sleep;
	With things that are chainless, and tameless, and proud,
	With the fire in the jagged thunder-cloud,
	With the wind in its sleep, with the wind in its waking,
	With the drops that go to the rainbow’s making,
	Wishing to be with the light leaves shaking,
	Or stones on some desolate highway breaking;
	Far up on the hills, where no foot surprises
	The dew as it falls, or the dust as it rises;
	To be couched with the beast in its torrid lair,
	Or drifting on ice with the polar bear,
	With the weaver at work at his quiet loom;
	Anywhere, anywhere, out of this room!

CHARLES TURNER On a Vase of Gold-Fish 1868

	The tortured mullet served the Roman’s pride
	By darting round the crystal vase, whose heat
	Ensured his woe and beauty till he died:
	These unharm’d gold-fish yield as rich a treat;
	Seen thus, in parlour-twilight, they appear
	As though the hand of Midas, hovering o’er,
	Wrought on the waters, as his touch drew near,
	And set them glancing with his golden power,
	The flash of transmutation! In their glass
	They float and glitter, by no anguish rackt;
	And, though we see them swelling as they pass,
	’Tis but a painless and phantasmal act,
	The trick of their own bellying walls, which charms
	All eyes – themselves it vexes not, nor harms.

MORTIMER COLLINS Winter in Brighton

	Will there be snowfall on lofty Soracte
	After a summer so tranquil and torrid?
	Whoso detests the east wind, as a fact he
	Thinks ’twill be horrid.
	But there are zephyrs more mild by the ocean,
	Every keen touch of the snowdrifts to lighten:
	If to be cosy and snug you’ve a notion
	Winter in Brighton!

	Politics nobody cares about. Spurn a
	Topic whereby all our happiness suffers.
	Dolts in the back streets of Brighton return a
	Couple of duffers.
	Fawcett and White in the Westminster Hades
	Strive the reporters’ misfortunes to heighten.
	What does it matter? Delicious young ladies
	Winter in Brighton!

	Good is the turtle for luncheon at Mutton’s,
	Good is the hock that they give you at Bacon’s,
	Mainwaring’s fruit in the bosom of gluttons
	Yearning awakens;
	Buckstone comes hither, delighting the million,
	‘Mong the theatrical minnows a Triton;
	Dickens and Lemon pervade the Pavilion: –
	Winter in Brighton!

	If you’ve a thousand a year, or a minute –
	If you’re a D’Orsay, whom every one follows –
	If you’ve a head (it don’t matter what’s in it)
	Fair as Apollo’s –
	If you approve of flirtations, good dinners,
	Seascapes divine which the merry winds whiten,
	Nice little saints and still nicer young sinners –
	Winter in Brighton!

MATTHEW ARNOLD 1869

	Below the surface-stream, shallow and light,
	Of what we say we feel – below the stream,
	As light, of what we think we feel – there flows
	With noiseless current strong, obscure and deep,
	The central stream of what we feel indeed.

AUGUSTA WEBSTER from A Castaway 1870

	Poor little diary, with its simple thoughts,
	Its good resolves, its ‘Studied French an hour,’
	‘Read Modern History,’ ‘Trimmed up my grey hat,’
	‘Darned stockings,’ ‘Tatted,’ ‘Practised my new song,’
	‘Went to the daily service,’ ‘Took Bess soup,’
	‘Went out to tea.’ Poor simple diary!
	And did I write it? Was I this good girl,
	This budding colourless young rose of home?
	Did I so live content in such a life,
	Seeing no larger scope, nor asking it,
	Than this small constant round – old clothes to mend,
	New clothes to make, then go and say my prayers,
	Or carry soup, or take a little walk
	And pick the ragged-robins in the hedge?
	Then, for ambition, (was there ever life
	That could forego that?) to improve my mind
	And know French better and sing harder songs;
	For gaiety, to go, in my best white
	Well washed and starched and freshened with new bows,
	And take tea out to meet the clergyman.
	No wishes and no cares, almost no hopes,
	Only the young girl’s hazed and golden dreams
	That veil the Future from her.
	So long since:
	And now it seems a jest to talk of me
	As if I could be one with her, of me
	Who am… me.
	And what is that? My looking-glass
	Answers it passably; a woman sure,
	No fiend, no slimy thing out of the pools,
	A woman with a ripe and smiling lip
	That has no venom in its touch I think,
	With a white brow on which there is no brand;
	A woman none dare call not beautiful,
	Not womanly in every woman’s grace.

	Aye, let me feed upon my beauty thus,
	Be glad in it like painters when they see
	At last the face they dreamed but could not find
	Look from their canvas on them, triumph in it,
	The dearest thing I have. Why, ’tis my all,
	Let me make much of it: is it not this,
	This beauty, my own curse at once and tool
	To snare men’s souls, (I know what the good say
	Of beauty in such creatures) is it not this
	That makes me feel myself a woman still,
	With still some little pride, some little –
	Stop!
	‘Some little pride, some little’ – Here’s a jest!
	What word will fit the sense but modesty?
	A wanton I, but modest!
	Modest, true;
	I’m not drunk in the streets, ply not for hire
	At infamous corners with my likenesses
	Of the humbler kind; yes, modesty’s my word –
	’Twould shape my mouth well too, I think I’ll try:
	‘Sir, Mr. What-you-will, Lord Who-knows-what,
	My present lover or my next to come,
	Value me at my worth, fill your purse full,
	For I am modest; yes, and honour me
	As though your schoolgirl sister or your wife
	Could let her skirts brush mine or talk of me;
	For I am modest.’
	Well, I flout myself:
	But yet, but yet –
	Fie, poor fantastic fool,
	Why do I play the hypocrite alone,
	Who am no hypocrite with others by?
	Where should be my ‘But yet’? I am that thing
	Called half a dozen dainty names, and none
	Dainty enough to serve the turn and hide
	The one coarse English worst that lurks beneath:
	Just that, no worse, no better.
	And, for me,
	I say let no one be above her trade;
	I own my kindredship with any drab
	Who sells herself as I, although she crouch
	In fetid garrets and I have a home
	All velvet and marqueterie and pastilles,
	Although she hide her skeleton in rags
	And I set fashions and wear cobweb lace:
	The difference lies but in my choicer ware,
	That I sell beauty and she ugliness;
	Our traffic’s one – I’m no sweet slaver-tongue
	To gloze upon it and explain myself
	A sort of fractious angel misconceived –
	Our traffic’s one: I own it. And what then?
	I know of worse that are called honourable.
	Our lawyers, who with noble eloquence
	And virtuous outbursts lie to hang a man,
	Or lie to save him, which way goes the fee:
	Our preachers, gloating on your future hell
	For not believing what they doubt themselves:
	Our doctors, who sort poisons out by chance
	And wonder how they’ll answer, and grow rich:
	Our journalists, whose business is to fib
	And juggle truths and falsehoods to and fro:
	Our tradesmen, who must keep unspotted names
	And cheat the least like stealing that they can:
	Our – all of them, the virtuous worthy men
	Who feed on the world’s follies, vices, wants,
	And do their businesses of lies and shams
	Honestly, reputably, while the world
	Claps hands and cries ‘good luck,’ which of their trades,
	Their honourable trades, barefaced like mine,
	All secrets brazened out, would shew more white?

	And whom do I hurt more than they? as much?
	The wives? Poor fools, what do I take from them
	Worth crying for or keeping? If they knew
	What their fine husbands look like seen by eyes
	That may perceive there are more men than one!
	But, if they can, let them just take the pains
	To keep them: ’tis not such a mighty task
	To pin an idiot to your apron-string;
	And wives have an advantage over us,
	(The good and blind ones have) the smile or pout
	Leaves them no secret nausea at odd times.
	Oh, they could keep their husbands if they cared,
	But ’tis an easier life to let them go,
	And whimper at it for morality.

	Oh! those shrill carping virtues, safely housed
	From reach of even a smile that should put red
	On a decorous cheek, who rail at us
	With such a spiteful scorn and rancorousness,
	(Which maybe is half envy at the heart)
	And boast themselves so measurelessly good
	And us so measurelessly unlike them,
	What is their wondrous merit that they stay
	In comfortable homes whence not a soul
	Has ever thought of tempting them, and wear
	No kisses but a husband’s upon lips
	There is no other man desires to kiss –
	Refrain in fact from sin impossible?
	How dare they hate us so? what have they done,
	What borne, to prove them other than we are?
	What right have they to scorn us – glass-case saints,
	Dianas under lock and key – what right
	More than the well-fed helpless barn-door fowl
	To scorn the larcenous wild-birds?
	Pshaw, let be!
	Scorn or no scorn, what matter for their scorn?
	I have outfaced my own – that’s harder work.
	Aye, let their virtuous malice dribble on –.
	Mock snowstorms on the stage – I’m proof long since:
	I have looked coolly on my what and why,
	And I accept myself.

DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI A Match with the Moon

	Weary already, weary miles to-night
	I walked for bed: and so, to get some ease,
	I dogged the flying moon with similes.
	And like a wisp she doubled on my sight
	In ponds; and caught in tree-tops like a kite;
	And in a globe of film all liquorish
	Swam full-faced like a silly silver fish; –
	Last like a bubble shot the welkin’s height
	Where my road turned, and got behind me, and sent
	My wizened shadow craning round at me,
	And jeered, ‘So, step the measure, – one two three!’
	And if I faced on her, looked innocent.
	But just at parting, halfway down a dell,
	She kissed me for good-night. So you’ll not tell.

DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI The Woodspurge

	The wind flapped loose, the wind was still,
	Shaken out dead from tree and hill:
	I had walked on at the wind’s will, –
	I sat now, for the wind was still.

	Between my knees my forehead was, –
	My lips drawn in, said not Alas!
	My hair was over in the grass,
	My naked ears heard the day pass.

	My eyes, wide open, had the run
	Of some ten weeds to fix upon;
	Among those few, out of the sun,
	The woodspurge flowered, three cups in one.

	From perfect grief there need not be
	Wisdom or even memory:
	One thing then learnt remains to me, –
	The woodspurge has a cup of three.